Alert Chain and Observation Planning for Ground Wide Angle Camera Network
Abstract
The Ground Wide Angle Camera Network (GWAC-N) is a robotic telescope network. It consists of ten wide-field core telescopes (GWAC-A) and two 60cm narrow-field rapid follow-up telescopes (GWAC-F60A/B). The primary scientific goal of GWAC-N is to detect optical counterparts of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) discovered by the SVOM satellite. This is achieved through synchronized monitoring with the GWAC-A array. Upon receiving a GRB trigger alert, the network conducts rapid, multi-band follow-up observations using the GWAC-F60A/B telescopes. The two-stage observation process involves many telescopes, making manual control impractical. Automated operations are therefore essential. They are realized through an integrated alert processing chain and an automated observation scheduling and dispatching mechanism. To enable this, we employ the SVOM Follow-up Observation Coordinating Service (FOCS) and GWAC-N's Automatic Observation Management (AOM) system. This paper presents the integrated alert processing workflow. It also describes the formulation of observation strategies, and the scheduling and execution of observations enabled by FOCS and AOM.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.24264,
title = {Alert Chain and Observation Planning for Ground Wide Angle Camera Network},
author = {Xu-hui Han and Pin-pin Zhang and Yu-jie Xiao and Li-ping Xin and Ruo-song Zhang and Lei Huang and Xiao-meng Lu and Hong-bo Cai and Yang Xu and Wen-long Dong and Hua-li Li and Ya-tong Zheng and Jian-yan Wei},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.24264},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in the SVOM special issue in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 11 pages, 6 figures